Mail Question Time Fail

The obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre clearly believes it is on a winner today in its endless campaign to slag off the hated BBC, as Gerri Peev, regular Beeb-basher, asks “Was Dimbleby told to go easy on Labour guest on Question Time? Leaked note reveals presenter was urged to ask more questions to Tory Lord Heseltine”. He was? How so?

“Several points were listed for government but just two for Rachel Reeves ... Labour's work and pensions spokesman given soft options, claim Tories ... Row comes after R4 presenter Humphrys admitted BBC has a liberal bias”. Where do we start with this steaming pile? Only one Tory – Andrew Bridgen – was quoted in the article. Humphrys is a Mail columnist and is giving his personal opinion.

That, Mail people, means it is not established fact. And nor is the assertion that one or other talking point is a “soft option”. How does Ms Peev tell how “soft” a question is? Has she run them past a professor of soft options in the faculty of softness at Soft University, whose softy campus nestles on the edge of the soft city of Softchester in the ancient county of Softshire?

Ah, but there is a contribution from one of the panellists: “[there] should be an alternative question time … with an impartial presenter and all panellists given equal opportunities to speak ... Now that the dust has settled I must say that last week’s was an appalling programme, biased and hijacked by liberals”. So said Alexander Nekrassov. He’s a former Kremlin advisor. Mandy Rice-Davies situation, then.

Who else was on the panel? This is where the backup will come from: Amanda Bloody Platell was also present, and if Dacre wants her to lay into the Beeb, she will do as she is bloody well told (that she, and other Mail pundits, also garner much of their pocket money from the Corporation is, at times like this, conveniently forgotten). Meanwhile, Ms Peev is concealing the key fact from her readers.

You’d like a clue? Here goes: where do the questions come from on Question Time? Do they, as Ms Peev is suggesting when she tells “The Mail has seen a copy of the questions and prompts to be sent to Mr Dimbleby”, come from whoever is chairing the programme? D’you know, they don’t come from the chair, do they? The whole point of Question Time is that questions come from the audience.

And, if Gerri Peev has copies of those, why isn’t she putting them into her article as well? But we know the answer: as ever, the Daily Mail is all about working back from the conclusion, selecting the facts to fit the narrative that has already been decided. These are then loaded into the top of the article and a suitably pejorative headline added, to ensure the readers make up their minds in the intended manner.

This is just another slice of lame, agenda-based rubbish. No change there, then.